09 April 2009

Customizing CRM by Using the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Developer Toolkit

To provide developers with the ability to create and manage on-premise CRM solutions in an integrated Visual Studio environment, the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Engineering for Enterprise (CRM E2) team initiated and sponsored the development of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Developer Toolkit. The toolkit includes two primary components:

The CRM ExplorerThe CRM Explorer complements the CRMSolution Framework, providing the project factories required to open and buildthe solution from within Visual Studio. The Explorer manifests as a windowwithin Visual Studio 2008 and provides direct access to CRM for creating andediting business units, security roles, and most importantly, entities. The CRMExplorer is linked to the solution framework which enables it to intelligentlyplace generated code into the relevant solution framework project.

The CRM Solution FrameworkThe CRM Solution Framework is a suite of Visual Studio C# projects that are coupled with CRM Entity customizations and wrapped with extensible MSBuild–based developer builds and daily builds. The Framework contains several “pre-canned” projects for the typical tasks that are required of developers when undertaking most Enterprise-level CRM projects. Several of these projects have an inheritance model that affords simple and intuitive augmentation, which can significantly reduce the time required to “jump start” development of new projects.

*[1] If you get warnings like: The referenced component 'UKDynamics.Instrumentation' could not be found. Then you need to re-add the dll reference(UKDynamics.Instrumentation.dll) from UKDynamics\bin folder.

*[2] If you get errors like: The command ""C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\bin\gacutil" /i "C:\Projects\MyCrmSolution\SourceCode\MyCrmSolution\Core\Configuration\bin\Debug\MyCrmSolution.Core.Configuration.dll" /f" exited with code 1. ConfigurationIt because all assemblies are delay-signed, you can turn off the strong-name verification on the dev environment by using the SN tool from Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt:SN.exe -Vr *,*then run IISRESET.exe

*[3] If you get errors when expand the item, like:Client found response content type of 'text/html; charset=utf-8, but expected 'text/xml'. HttpException 1310Exception message: Could not load file or assembly 'MyCrmSolution.Core.BusinessProcesses, Version=1.1.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=2c1937e0898110b2' or one of its dependencies. Strong name signature could not be verified. The assembly may have been tampered with, or it was delay signed but not fully signed with the correct private key. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131045)It is the same reason and solution with *[2]

Note: The Toolkit is based on components that were initially developed within the Dynamics CRM MCS team in the UK subsidiary. Those components have been refined over a number of UK-based global engagements.

Important: The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Developer Toolkit currently supports customization of on-premise CRM deployments only. This Toolkit and the accompanying documentation are unsupported and are being provided “as is” by the CRM E2 team to assist developers with managing and extending their on-premise Microsoft Dynamics CRM implementations.

25 comments:

Hi Jim,Great to see you using the CRM Developer's Toolkit within a day of release!You should be able to avoid the issues you mention (1-3) by executing a full Dev Build from a Visual Studio 2008 command prompt. This will build both solutions within the framework and also add a skip verifiction entry for the relevant strong names.Regards,Phil

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About Me

Jim has great passion and deep understanding of the I.T. industry, strategy, emerging markets and trend of the “New Style of I.T.”. Jim is ex-enterpriser, book author and one of the earliest participants and practitioners with traceable records of Smartphone apps, modern Web technologies, and Cloud technologies; Influencing the mutual enterprise customers in designing and deciding upon an IT strategy and cloud platform. He had been awarded as Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) on Dynamics CRM for 7 years (2008 - 2015), with extensive knowledge on Enterprise-IT solutions.